Things to keep my LO moving

JM27

Hello all,

Recently brought my LO back home with me. We made it! Then I got sick and haven’t been feeling great but getting better.

I wanted to know if anyone has any ideas to get my LO moving. I work from home and because I have been sick we haven’t done much.
My LO doesn’t generally get up early so once he does I would like to try and something to get him moving around right now he is sitting a lot.

At his own home he is a bit more active.

any suggestions?

Emily 123

Hi JM,

It might help to see if there's some kind of adult daycare around that offers activities. Or see if there's anything offered locally by a Council on Aging or the local church or community center. Since you're working, maybe you could have an aide come by to take him out. A lot of times the aide is introduced as a 'friend'.

As you know, he's not able to imprint new information very well and that includes visual information, like your home and neighborhood, so a move to a new environment will make him use up a lot of his reserves daily, just trying to make sense of why he's with you and how to navigate a place that's not familiar. He may never get oriented to things because the disease interferes with that. My mom spent 9 months assuming she was visiting me for the weekend and hunting for the cereal every morning. Very Groundhog Day. Given that, and that the disease will make him have trouble initiating activities because he'll be losing the ability to put the steps of a task in order, It's pretty usual to see a loss of executive ability.

His ability to sense time passing will be affected, as well as knowing what he has and hasn't done during the day. You may want dad up and around, but dad may be ok sitting, more than you're used to seeing. Because of the anosognosia he may talk a good game about wanting to do things and being bored, but left to his own devices he's actually OK.

Early on it's easy to try to anticipate your loved one's needs based on how they were pre-disease, or what they're telling you, and assume they need to be engaged at the level they used to be. That can set them up for failure—they will try to perform at that level, but might not be able to succeed, which will be hard for them. You may feel the need to scramble to find things to keep him occupied, but I would see if this is more the anosognosia and loss of time talking than the current reality—not trying to discourage you from keeping him active but assess his actual capabilities now and continue to look for guided or simple things to do.

I also work from home, and it was a stretch to stay focused for a 40 hour work week and keep Mom engaged. I felt guilty, because she couldn't initiate or follow through with tasks without support, but I also needed to be working. Perhaps in her own home she could have, because she had those baked-in visual cues, but not in a new environment—the ability to stay focused was gone. (And eventually, even in her own home that would have disappeared.)

Frankly, I just didn't have the ability to support/engage her during the week given the challenges presented by the dementia, and even on weekends I noticed that doing just one thing, like going out to lunch or for a walk would use up a lot of her mental resources. It's hard at first to reconcile what your person can handle now with who they've always been.

Ultimately, it was a better choice to have her in dementia focused AL with an eventual move to MC. She wanted her 'own place', and they offered activities and support with people of a like age.

Hang in there!

H1235

Someone here suggested simple models. A puzzle? Theses won’t get him moving, but it’s something other than the TV to break up the day. Can you think of anything very simple you need done around the house that he would be able to do, tell him your really busy could you feed the dog, take out the trash, my work bench in the garage is a mess could you organize it…It may even end up causing you more work, but might be worth it. Those aren’t exactly fun things but it would get him out of the chair and may make him feel useful which I think many with dementia struggle with. I hope you can find something.

JM27

Thank you all for the suggestions and the support.

I appreciate them all. ❤️